


Elevenses

by bluestalking



Series: Amelia Pond and the Mastersmiths [2]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: AU, M/M, Season/Series 05, Young Amelia Pond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-29
Updated: 2012-06-29
Packaged: 2017-11-08 19:45:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/446832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluestalking/pseuds/bluestalking
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“There, there, Amelia,” the Master says. “There’s always another apple. At least until some silly man with a fancy screwdriver lets a monster into your bedroom and it eats you up like a little snack.”</p><p>[Following <i>Redirection</i>, AU of THE ELEVENTH HOUR wherein the Master is alive.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Elevenses

_What am I doing here?_ the Master thinks, the moment the door clicks shut. He is locked in a box with the _Doctor_ , of all people, between him and the exit. Great plan, really excellent. He thinks, vaguely, _This is entirely your fault, you floppy-haired wanker, you are_ in my head _and_ making me stupid.

He doesn’t need drums or hunger to feel that burn, the crush of everything crowding and collapsing, he needs _control_. He presses his hands together and grits his teeth and thinks about ripping the new thing to pieces. 

And then the new thing says, “Welcome back to the TARDIS, Master. Maybe don’t kidnap ‘er this time. Hasn’t had a chance to change yet? Nope. Nope.” The Master falls back against the TARDIS’s lumpy wall with a thud.

It’s completely odd, not right at all, his heartbeat. The Doctor’s reached in and turned a valve inside the Master’s chest somewhere; it’s let all the steam out. The Master doesn’t need, need, very badly need to kill something anymore. He feels—he feels like—

He feels very uncomfortable and forgets to ask himself what he is doing again until they’ve already taken off. Then he looks out the window, sees space whooshing by. He watches.

He mutters, after awhile, “This is not conquering worlds.”

The new thing stops counting off TARDIS bits and says, “No, wasn’t planning on doing that; don’t think you should plan on doing that; didn’t I tell you there were better things to do with your life than _that?_ And look at this, what do you know, you’re doing them.”

“I hate your new ears,” the Master spits, because he doesn’t like being overheard like that. The new thing’s ears are a bit large. 

“No? They’re very good ones,” the new thing says. “Ve-ry, very good ones, I think.”

“Ugh,” says the Master. He edges past the new thing and pokes at a button.

“Oh, no, don’t--!” the Doctor starts at the same moment. The TARDIS lights itself on fire. 

The Master leaps back from the consoles.

“What have you _done_ to it?” he shrieks at the new thing. “One TARDIS, one, left in the entire universe, and what did you _do_ to it?” Everything begins to shudder like they’re in the way of a hurricane.

“Me? I just got here! It doesn’t like _you_!” shouts the Doctor. “Little wonder! I expect it remembers you from the time you made it into a terrible evil paradox machine!” 

“Not fair!” howls the Master. “I _died_ since then!” 

And then he has to get completely affronted.

“Why are you laughing?” he screams at the new Doctor. “WHY ARE YOU LAUGHING? WE ARE GOING TO DIE!”

“ARE WE?” the Doctor shouts back, and there’s a jolt, and the Doctor is flung past a window. Something explodes.

“OH!” says the Doctor, grabbing onto the console. “YES WE ARE! WE ARE! WE ARE _CRASHING!_ ” He stares intently at the instruments and settles in for a good long chortle.

“I HATE YOU!” the Master screams, before he’s knocked onto the floor. He climbs back up and clings to a piece of the wall. “I HATE YOU, I HATE YOU!” Then there is the biggest explosion yet. He and the Doctor get jolted loose and go hurtling off down a corridor.

As the new thing is sailing past the Master’s head to land next to him in the swimming pool (laughing hysterically) ( _madman_ ), the Master thinks again, _What am I doing?_

“Whooooooooooooooooo!” says the Doctor, putting his arms in the air and sinking like a stone.

“I HA-- _AAUGUGGLE!_ ” says the Master.

 _Then_ they crash.

~

The answer to her prayer to Santa is an explosive noise and a smoking blue box.

Maybe that’s not the best sign, Amelia thinks, because someone who would crash a blue box and set it on fire in her back garden is perhaps not someone who’ll be much help fixing her problem with the crack. 

Still, she goes out back in her nightgown with her torch and her red wellies. The blue box is larger up close. It’s glowing yellow light and huffing out steam. When the doors burst open and the grappling hook shoots out, it nearly takes the torch with it.

Amelia steps back quickly, and an insane person sticks his head over the side of the box. He is all wet and his shirt seems to have a lot of holes in it. Amelia does not know what to make of that.

“Could I have an apple?” says the insane person. He is really very damp. “All I can think about! Apples. I love apples. Maybe I’m having a craving! That’s new, never had cravings before.” 

The damp madman starts to wrestle his way over the edge of the box, and, “How about you go back to that and stop babbling?” calls another voice, sort of fogged and far-off.

“Whooo! Look at that!” the madman says, peering down through the billowing steam. “Just had a fall! All the way down there, right into the library! Hell of a climb back up. _He’s_ still climbing!” The madman gestures with his thumb.

The other voice calls sort of angrily, “Yes, thanks for the help!” Then it uses a number of words, all of which are words Amelia is not allowed to say.

“Why are you wet, if you were in the library?” Amelia asks the madman. She wonders if the other one is nearly this mad.

“The swimming pool’s _in_ the library,” the madman says. “Actually, I think _he’s_ still _in_ the swimming pool. Are you still in the swimming pool?” he yells into the box. The voice below uses more words Amelia must not say.

“Ehm,” says Amelia to the madman. “Did you come about the crack in my wall?”

“What cra—aaah!” says the madman, and falls off the box. Amelia steps out of the way. It’s a bit frightening, the way he grabs his chest and rolls around. 

“You all right, Mister?” she asks.

The voice from below gets real clear and close, all of a sudden.

“Oh, yes, he only _died_ recently,” it says. Amelia looks over, and sees a head peering down at her from the edge of the box. It’s got yellow hair and an expression like a dog is piddling on its foot.

“ _Died_?” says Amelia. 

“Perfectly normal!” chokes the madman. 

“Yes, I go sticking bits of myself in other people all the time,” hisses the angry head.

The madman coughs politely, and out comes a bit of sparkling, floaty gold dust.

“What?” he says. “Are you saying there’s a me in you?”

“Don’t you remember?” 

“Oh, aye,” says the madman. “Got it now. Sorry. Bit muddled. Still cooking.”

“You’re not a _hot-pot_ ,” says the angry head.

“Who are you?” Amelia asks them, furrowing her eyebrows.

“Dunno yet,” says the madman. “Still _cooking.”_

“Ugh,” says the angry head. It climbs up to the edge of the box and turns out to be a man with an entire body attached. He’s wearing a ratty black jumper and wrinkled jeans. Amelia realizes from the telly that he must be a drug addict. 

The drug addict jumps out of the box and dusts his knees off, but he’s just wet, so it doesn’t help.

“Oh, hello,” says the madman. “Escaped the pool, have you? Don’t think about taking over the world yet, all right, everything’s still screwed on a bit weird. It’ll be _very difficult_ to stop you.”

He’s turning his hands round, looking interested at how they’re glowing. The drug addict says nastily, “I suppose you’d like me to hold off on my great evil until you’ve stopped leaking everywhere?”

“That would be ideal, yes,” the madman says. “Does it scare you?”

“What are you talking about?” says the drug addict.

“Not you,” the madman says. “Her.” He looks at Amelia. “Does the crack in your wall scare you?”

“Well, yes,” Amelia says obviously. 

The madman leaps up and says, “Right! Then! I’m the Doctor! Do everything I tell you—”

“You _never_ change,” the drug addict says. “Why don’t you _ever change_?”

“—don’t ask stupid questions,” the Doctor goes on, “and don’t wander off.”

“I think I’ll take a walk,” says the drug addict.

“Oh no you don’t,” says the Doctor. “I’d hate to not see you get into trouble, my dear Master.”

The drug addict looks angry, and then sort of funny. He stays put.

“ _What’s_ he called?” Amelia says.

“Oh,” says the Doctor. “He’s _the Master_. He likes it when people call him by his name, but I shouldn’t do it if I were you. At least I think I shouldn’t. I don’t know whether I would if I were me. So maybe for you—but, no. Well, never mind. Come along! I don’t know why we’re standing here being irrelevant. Hurry up!”

The Doctor spins around into a tree and falls over. 

“I hate you!” says the drug addict, and kicks the blue box, which lets off another puff of smoke.

Amelia is not sure how these people are supposed to fix anything.

~

“If you’re a doctor,” the very small person asks, “why does your box say ‘police’?”

The Doctor tries to get out of this question by biting a lot of apple at once, and as soon as he does the Master says, “Because he _broke it_. Because he’s an _idiot_.” 

The Doctor spits out the apple ( _bleah_ ). The small person, who is clearly much too sensitive, scrunches up her face. The Doctor says, very firmly, talking to the small person but with his eyes landing reproachfully on the Master, “That’s disgusting. What is that?”

“The truth,” says the Master, “you idiot.”

“An _apple_ ,” says the small person.

“Get. Me. Yoghurt,” the Doctor commands her.

The small person does, but the Doctor frowns on yoghurt. Then he frowns on bacon, and on beans. He throws the bread and butter into nearest passing cat. He suspects the cat of overreacting.

“You are so picky,” the Master says from behind him, crossing his arms.

The Master takes a nap in one of the kitchen chairs. When he looks up, the Doctor is eating something delicious.

“Ugh!” says the Master.

“—Man eats fish custard, and look at you!” the Doctor finishes saying. “Just sittin’ there!” He waves an oven-baked fish stick around in the air. The custard is threatening to drop off the end. He catches it in his mouth rewards its tastiness with an appropriate yummy sound.

“Because if she thinks about it too hard she’ll probably be sick,” says the Master. 

“Oh, shut up,” says the Doctor. “It’s not that long ago you were eating people.”

The girl looks perturbed, but not really surprised. The Doctor likes this about her. The Master, the Doctor notes with interest, also looks perturbed.

“ _You_ ,” says the Master, his expression not quite right in a way that the Doctor seems to remember isn’t usual, “shut up.”

“Well,” says the Doctor, watching him. “I think it’s time we took a look at that crack.”

~

The crack that is a crack, which is in the girl’s wall, makes the Master deeply uncomfortable. It gives the new thing a manic look of joy. He, every one of him, has always has liked schisms in reality, paradoxical alien hordes, mind-rending unfixable problems that will tear the universe to bits and pieces.

The Master likes them too, except he only likes them if he’s made them himself. This one is a bit familiar, a bit reminiscent of things the Master prefers not to remember. And he still has that odd feeling in his chest saying, _You wouldn’t make something like_ that _, would you?_

 _I would make exactly that thing,_ he keeps telling it, but the protest skitters clawlessly down his ribs, and under his heartbeats the feeling rests, heavy and disgusting and doe-eyed and insistent. He knows where it’s coming from. _Who_. It makes him want to tear things.

The Master tries to ignore the feeling (the _intruder_ ) and look at the crack like he himself would look at the crack. He leans over the new thing’s shoulder and huffs out a breath at it, deciding not to be afraid. To make it better, he steals the apple with the face on it from the new thing’s pocket and bites its eye off. _Still eating people,_ he thinks to himself. The girl looks at him and purses her lips. Disapproving.

“There, there, Amelia,” the Master says. “There’s always another apple. At least until some silly man with a fancy screwdriver lets a monster into your bedroom and it eats you up like a little snack.” He smiles with all his teeth.

“ _Shhh_ ,” says the new thing, listening to the crack through a plastic cup. “I’d better just open this up and see if I can’t shut it, then, eh?”

“ _Good_ plan,” says the Master, head whipping around.

“There, there,” the new thing repeats absently. He reaches out and gives the Master’s hand a squeeze. He lets go before the Master can react, clasping hands with the little girl. The Master says evenly, clenching his fist, “How nice to be delivered into a life of home repair in Scotland!”

“We’re not in Scotland,” the little girl and the new thing chorus, and then the new thing does what he does and a giant eye starts shouting at them from another dimension.

“Eyes everywhere today,” the Master says after a moment.

~

After the eye in the crack in her wall tells them all about Prisoner Zero—except not really, Amelia thinks, because “Prisoner Zero” is _all_ it told them—the Master disappears. The Doctor runs around the house looking crazed. It’s all a little worrying.

In the middle of the Doctor’s bad explanation for what’s going on (Amelia thinks that even if he is a very good doctor, he must not be very good at telling sick people what’s wrong with them), there’s a noise. It’s a strange running-back-and-forth vacuum sort of noise, coming from the garden.

The Doctor’s head jerks up and he tenses like a dog smelling something it wants to catch and kill. 

“Oh no,” he says, “Oh no oh no. NO!” 

He bolts off down the stairs. Amelia chases after him. She almost runs into him when he stops dead in the garden.

“Where is it?” she asks after she’s looked. The blue box isn’t sitting in the middle of the garden shed anymore.

The Doctor makes a humming, worried sound, patting his hands against the sides of his legs. He says, “I...don’t _know_.”

They stand there for a minute or so, and once or twice the Doctor starts forward, like maybe he sees his odd box somewhere a few gardens away. But he keeps stopping again. 

“Excuse me?” Amelia says. “Are you all right? Is there still something in my house?”

“I suppose there is,” the Doctor says, though he’s not paying proper attention to Amelia. “He took it away. He took her _away_ ,” he says, sounding shocked. “I think—I know he’s a bit evil, but I didn’t think he’d—but then,” he turns to Amelia and raises his eyebrows confidentially, “he _has_ done before, hasn’t he?”

Amelia asks, “Is he a drug addict?”

The Doctor’s head swivels around so he can look at her. “The Master? Oh! I don’t know. Maybe he is sometimes. _Damn_ him, going off with the TARDIS in the _middle of rebuilding_ —he’d better not make her all manky.” 

“Who’s _her?_ ” Amelia asks, but the vacuum-cleaner noise starts up again in the middle of her question and drowns it out. 

“OH, yes, you had better be doing what you seem to be doing! You’re bringing her back _right this minute!_ Right minute, right now!” the Doctor shouts. Amelia stares as the blue box (upright this time) solidifies from thin air in front of her.

The doors burst open and the box spits out the Master, who lands with a grunt face first on a heap of potting mix.

“What’ve you done with her?” the Doctor demands. He sprints past Amelia and the Master to get inside without waiting for an answer. Amelia creeps closer.

“AAAAIIIGHHHH!” someone howls from inside the blue box. Amelia stops. The Master gets to his feet, looking cranky. The Doctor sticks his head out the door and looks at the Master beseechingly.

“What is it, darling, too yellow?” the Master sneers.

“No,” the Doctor says. He says it very quietly. 

“ _Then what?_ ” snarls the Master. Amelia looks between the two of them, wide-eyed. 

“It’s beautiful,” the Doctor says simply. There’s an odd sound in his voice. Amelia thinks, despite what he’s saying, that he might be sad. The Master shrugs like a horse twitching off flies.

“I suppose you want to be alone with the precious thing,” he says.

“Yes,” the Doctor answers bluntly, “but I’ve got _you_ along, haven’t I?”

The Master looks surprised, and, to Amelia’s surprise, he looks a little happier.

“I don’t understand why she didn’t spit you out before she left, though,” the Doctor says thoughtfully. The Master looks instantly crankier.

“Don’t be stupid,” he says, “your last incarnation fed me one of his lives.”

“That’s _true_ ,” the Doctor says even more thoughtfully. “I suppose really you’re a part of me, then.”

“ _No_ ,” the Master says, aghast. “Aghast” is a word Amelia’s aunt likes a lot, especially when she is talking about their neighbors.

“The TARDIS obviously thought so. Well. Until she threw you out into that pile of dirt, I suppose.”

“He should have let me _die_ ,” the Master hisses.

“I suppose we should be finding that Prisoner Zero, shouldn’t we?” the Doctor says, ignoring him. “I hate to think what damage it could do in the long run, skulking around unnoticed.” He gives the Master a significant look. The Master looks outraged. “Pond,” says the Doctor, “you keep close to me, all right?”

“Yeah,” Amelia says. She whispers, “Is he all right?”

The Master is knocking the dirt off his front, except that it’s turned into a kind of clawing.

“Well, Pond,” the Doctor whispers back, “I’ve got a brand new life, he’s got a brand new life. His doesn’t fit quite right, you see. Not to worry, he just needs to adjust.”

“Um,” says Amelia. “All right.”

“Quite right!” the Doctor says. “Come on then!”

“Are we going to kill Prisoner Zero?” the Master asks.

“I don’t know,” the Doctor says, like he hasn’t thought of it. “I’m not very interested in _killing_ things.”

The Master rushes up and grabs the Doctor (the Doctor yelps) by his collar. Amelia jumps a backwards step. 

“Tell me,” the Master growls, shaking the Doctor, “that we are going to _kill something_.”

“I can’t. That, I cannot do. Would you mind if we sent it off home to suffer eternal imprisonment instead?” the Doctor asks.

The Master lets him go and says tiredly, “You disgust me.”

Amelia is sure the Master is really dangerous. He and the Doctor have both said so. And he’s quick and angry and doesn’t seem to work right, so Amelia can understand that he might be dangerous. But she’s having a hard time believing it.

“Come along, Pond!” the Doctor says. Amelia comes along, looking out for frightening eyeball aliens. “Come along, Master, too, if you think you’ve got more of the brains for it.”

The Master seems to unstick from his spot in the air. His face is very carefully still. They all go into the house.

“So,” the Doctor says. “An escaped prisoner, according to the giant eyeball...”

“That was a bit weird,” Amelia says.

“Was it?” says the Doctor. “Yes, I suppose.”

“You’re a bit weird,” the Master mutters. Amelia isn’t certain which of them he’s talking to. She tries looking at him without him noticing, since she thinks he wouldn’t like that, but it doesn’t tell her anything except that he looks increasingly uncomfortable in the ratty jumper.

“Tell me, Pond,” the Doctor says, acting uninterrupted, “what are the best hiding places in the house?”

~

It takes them less than a quarter of an hour to find the alien, which is a see-through eel. It’s hiding at the back of the refrigerator, looking chilled and uncomfortable. Amelia supposes that refrigerators are only good environments for eels that are already dead.

“Now listen here, Prisoner Zero,” the Doctor starts, pointing something at it that he keeps calling a _Sonic Screwdriver_. (It doesn’t look anything like a screwdriver.) “I’m going to give you a chance to—”

Lightning comes out of the Master’s hand and transforms Prisoner Zero into a see-through fish fry. The fridge rocks back and forth and ends up a burnt-out mess of a box. No more custard, then.

The Doctor turns to the Master in disbelief. “I told you we’re NOT killing it!” he shouts.

“Where were you going to get another dimensional tear?” the Master sneers reasonably. “And if you did, what were you going to do? Going to rip the fabric of space and time yourself and stuff it in, you egomaniacal git?”

The Doctor gapes for a moment, and follows up bravely, “You’re not meant to still be able to _do_ that.”

The Master inspects his fingers. “I don’t think it’s a problem,” he says. “I don’t think I’m going to go around eating people, if that’s what you’re worried about. Or _dying._ ” 

The Doctor gives him a hard look, and then starts forward with his hand outstretched like he’s reaching for the Master’s face. The Master ducks away and shoves him backwards.

“Don’t even think about it,” he snaps. “Someone really needs to work on your god complex.”

“Says _you,”_ the Doctor retorts, but distractedly, like he’s too overcome with wonder over something Amelia doesn’t know to bother with real rebukes.

“Tell me it isn’t going to be like this,” the Master says sourly.

“Oh,” says the Doctor happily, “it probably is.”

~

“Well,” says the Doctor, once they've worked out that there's nothing to be done for the fridge. “It’s been lovely meeting you, Pond. We’ll have to be going, now.”

“Already? Oh!” Amelia says. She knew they’d go, of course, but she still feels startled from the outside in, like she’d only known at the centre of her and the rest had just caught up uncomfortably fast.

“Perhaps we’ll meet again,” the Doctor says, and gives her a warm pat on the shoulder. He looks down at himself, and sideways at the Master. “In a better state of dress, even,” he says. He smiles at Amelia. “Take care, Pond, and take care of Pond’s aunt. Sorry about the fridge.”

“It’s no bother,” Amelia says automatically, though _of course_ it is. 

The Master pointedly ignores her as he follows the Doctor into the box. The vacuum noise comes and goes, and the box goes with it.

Amelia sits outside for five more minutes, letting the cool night air prickle against her face. In that five minutes she can see her whole future life. She’ll live alone with her aunt and have a few unextraordinary friends (Rory) who won’t believe her when she says that a couple of gay men in an outdated police box came to her house in the middle of the night and ate all her food and patched a crack in her bedroom wall. They won’t believe about the alien, and for the rest, they won’t see what’s so exceptional about it.

She’ll get a job after school, and maybe a boyfriend (although she isn’t sure about _that_ ), and definitely a cat. Someday she’ll live here on her own, or she’ll move to a flat. Everything will be extremely plain and usual. She’ll be happy, probably. Eventually she’ll die.

Amelia thinks her heart will break.

But after five minutes, the vacuum-cleaner noise comes back and saves her. When the police box appears, it is upright. When the Doctor and the Master come out of it, they’re both wearing fresh clothes. The Doctor laughs, loudly and rudely. 

“ _I’m_ all flash and no application? _I’m_ bad for the TARDIS?” he is saying. “Which of us built an evil paradox machine in this poor beauty? Which of us always _loses?_ Which of us is more likely to be caught dead wearing stockings and a frilly collar?”

“There is nothing wrong with a frilly—with those things,” the Master says stiffly. “There is nothing wrong with my intelligence, either. And _I_ didn’t put an interdimensional _crack_ in her.”

“In that case, my dear Master, you’re just extremely bad luck,” the Doctor says. “That’s nearly as bad as being stupid.”

“Perhaps you should have let me die,” the Master says grimly, like a mantra. (Amelia is only clear on this term in that it’s something you say _a lot.)_

“I couldn’t have done that, could I?” the Doctor says. “Wouldn’t be right.”

“You think you love everybody and want nobody and that everybody should want you,” the Master shouts, “but you’re just a snobby prat in bad clothes and the only people who really want you have their lives ruined by it!”

The Doctor looks surprised and wounded by this. Then he looks at Amelia.

“Pond,” he says, “it turns out this crack problem is bigger than I’d thought. You seem to be at the centre of it. Do you have any interest in travelling the vastness of time and space? In coming face to face with devastating beauty and beautiful devastations?” He glances over at the Master at this. The Master looks unimpressed. “No one you know will every get to do anything like this, that I can promise you.” He looks at Amelia hopefully.

“ _Yeah,”_ Amelia says, prompt and incredulous. Why did he think she was sitting here outside? “May I get my suitcase?”

“If you like,” the Doctor says doubtfully.

“No need,” the Master says. 

“What if I needed medicine?” Amelia asks. “What if I were asthmatic? Would you want me to leave without my inhaler?”

“Noo,” the Doctor says slowly. “Are you asthmatic?”

Amelia shakes her head. “My aunt says it pays to be conscientious, though,” she says.

“And no doubt your aunt is right,” the Doctor says. “So, do you need your things?”

Amelia considers. “I think I’m all right,” she says. “Can we go now, please, before my aunt gets home?”

They crowd into the police box, but there’s quite a lot of space.

“It’s—” Amelia begins.

“Bigger on the inside? Yes, I know,” the Doctor says. 

“It’s _lovely,”_ Amelia corrects him. “You already said it was big.”

“Oh,” says the Doctor, pleased. “Yes. Lovely. She _is.”_

“That’s because _I_ made her, this time around,” the Master says smugly.

“You _didn’t,”_ the Doctor retorts.

“Didn’t you both?” Amelia asks. It looks like them both. She runs her hand over the wall, yellow and breathing. She says, “What are we going to? Is it very far off? I’m rubbish at history.”

The Doctor and the Master pause mid-tiff to look at her and at each other. The Doctor shuts the door. 

He says, “I know somewhere nice and useful we can start.”

“Nice, or useful?” the Master mutters. Amelia doesn’t think he trusts the Doctor all that much. The Doctor is smiling at him, and it makes him frown.

“My dear Master, I think you could be both,” he says. The Master’s mouth gapes slightly. The Doctor says, “Help me steer? Just so you don’t fuss about how it’s not designed to be run by one person.”

“It’s _not,”_ the Master grumbles, but he looks appeased.

“Take a seat, Pond,” the Doctor says, grinning.

Amelia does. The TARDIS breathes. The world gets larger and larger.


End file.
